This is my Life.

As all of you know, I grew up in this tiny little town in the back woods of Pennsylvania.  I haven't done anything spectacular or anything throughout the course of my life.  As a kid I never really took big vacations or anything because of my dad's work and I finally went to the beach for the first time last summer.  I've been out of the country when I've gone to Canada and when I was born in South Korea.  Overall, I've lived a very average life and the main excitement I can remember from when I was younger was the fact that there was now a Citgo and a redlight in town which gave us a whopping 2.5 stop lights.  When I went to college, I chose somewhere only 2 hours from home.  Now, I'm the resident of one of the "cities" of Pennsylvania located right in the snow belt.  The main excitement at Behrend is the new buildings that are being put up and the fact that we make the newspaper frequently for getting the most snow or something like that.

 

Last night, I was sitting up on the deck with a couple of my friends after preport because I realized how awesome the stars and moon were when I had walked up there looking for another friend earlier.  After we had snack time (yes, because we're 6) we went up and laid down to do some awesome stargazing.  As we were laying there talking about life and counting shooting stars, the lights in the faculty lounge which is the room directly behind where we were laying went down.  We looked in and what did we see?  A few of our teachers dancing.  And not just any dancing, they were really dancing!!!!  We sat and laughed and laughed and laughed and we would keep peeking in trying to not let them see.  I can't tell you how many times we said, "I feel like we're 14 peeking in on a rated R movie when we're supposed to be in bed!"  And it was so true.  It was hilarious. We watched them for a long time and laughed our heads off.  As we sat there watching our faculty and staff dancing and listened to the waves crashing against the boat and watched the stars twinkling above, I realized...this is my life.  If you would've told me when I was a sophomore or junior in high school that before I turned 21 I would have officially gone to 12 different countries in my lifetime, I probably would've laughed at you.  Who gets the opportunity to do that in such a short period of time?  I've always dreamt of traveling, but like many of my dreams, I never expected it to come true.  Never did I think I would stand in one of the top five largest cathedrals in the world and see Christopher Columbus' tomb, never did I think I'd hike up Mount Vesuvius and stand and the edge of an active volcano, never in my life would I have thought I'd go to Croatia and hang out on an island filled with peacocks, never did I think I'd go to Greece and see the Parthenon and where so much ancient history began, never did I think I'd go to Turkey and haggle at the Grand Bazaar, never did I think I'd go to Bulgaria and take a shady van to Romania.  These things just don't happen to small town girls like me who graduated with 69 people from Keystone High School.  At this point in time, I've been to more foreign countries than to different states in my home country.  Now that's crazy.

 

This trip has been full of my little reality checks.  I'll be doing something, it can even be something very trivial like watching the sunset, and I'll realize, this is really happening and I am really here and this is my life.  Never did I think I could do something like this.  And it's even crazier the people you meet and how close you become in such a short amount of time.  In one of my first blogs I'm pretty sure, I wrote about how I was positive that none of these people were going to become my "real friends" because of how short a time we have together, but last night, Aeriale and I were reminiscing on when at dinner one night my friend said, "Guys, we're all going to be invited to each other's weddings right?" And we all laughed and said, "Well yeah of course!" then someone piped up and said, "But I don't think I'm getting married..." and shortly after we all agreed besides my friend Paul who said he was definitely getting married.  So us girls decided that we'd be his wife's bridesmaids.  At that point in time, I think I concluded that we were in Spain.  Spain was our first country here.  Even if it wasn't Spain, it was in one of the first 3 or 4 countries that we visited which means we hadn't been on this trip for more than a month at that time.  We're already planning our reunions and visits to each other and it's crazy because I truly think we'll keep in touch.  I feel like I know a lot of the people here better than I know my friends back at Behrend.  It's amazing how quickly you can adjust and become friends.  I thought it was crazy that I could become really good friends with people in like...4-6 months at college, but here...it takes less than a month.  Sure we may not know every last detail about each other, but we don't know every last detail about each other at college either.  A lot of people don't even know all the details about each other from home, I just know a lot because of the fact that I'm from a tiny town and grew up with all of my best friends.

 

Again, this place is weird and the experiences I have are priceless and the friends I've made are endless and forever and I will never forget that this is my life...and finally for once, I have a story.